History of Holland

by George Edmundson

The immense and growing prosperity of Amsterdam at this time was indeed mainly due to the fall of Antwerp from its high estate. To reconquer Antwerp had indeed long been a favourite project of Frederick Henry. In 1638 he made careful and ample preparations for its realisation. But it was not to be. Misfortune this year was to dog his steps. The advance was made in two bodies. The larger under the prince was to march straight to Antwerp. The second, of 6000 men, commanded by Count William of Nassau, was instructed to seize some outlying defences on the Scheldt before joining the main force before the town. Count William began well,[pg.151] but, hearing a false rumour that a fleet was sailing up the Scheldt to intercept his communications, he hastily retreated. While his ranks were in disorder he was surprised by a Spanish attack, and practically his entire force was cut to pieces. On hearing of this disaster the stadholder had no alternative but to abandon the siege.

Constant campaigning and exposure to the hardships of camp life year after year began at this time seriously to affect the health of the stadholder. He was much troubled by attacks of gout, which frequently prevented him from taking his place in the field. In 1639 there were no military events of importance; nevertheless this year was a memorable one in the annals of the Dutch republic.

It was the year of the battle of the Downs. A great effort was made by Spain to re-establish her naval supremacy in the narrow seas, and the finest fleet that had left the harbours of the peninsula since 1588 arrived in the Channel in September, 1639. It consisted of seventy-seven vessels carrying 24,000 men, sailors and soldiers, and was under the command of an experienced and capable seaman, Admiral Oquendo. His orders were to drive the Dutch fleet from the Channel and to land 10,000 men at Dunkirk as a reinforcement for the Cardinal Infante. Admiral Tromp had been cruising up and down the Channel for some weeks on the look-out for the Spaniards, and on September 16 he sighted the armada. He had only thirteen vessels with him, the larger part of his fleet having been detached to keep watch and ward over Dunkirk. With a boldness, however, that might have been accounted temerity, Tromp at once attacked the enemy and with such fury that the Spanish fleet sought refuge under the lee of the Downs and anchored at the side of an English squadron under Vice-Admiral Pennington. Rejoined by seventeen ships from before Dunkirk, the Dutch admiral now contented himself with a vigilant blockade, until further reinforcements could reach him. Such was the respect with which he had inspired the Spaniards, that no attempt was made to break the blockade; and in the meantime Tromp had sent urgent messages to Holland asking the Prince of Orange and the admiralties to strain every nerve to give him as many additional ships as possible. The request met with a ready and enthusiastic response. In all the dockyards work went on with relays of men night and day. In less than a month Tromp found himself at the head of 105 sail with twelve fire-ships. They were smaller ships than those of his adversary,[pg.152] but they were more than enough to ensure victory. On October 21, after detaching Vice-Admiral Witte de with 30 ships to watch Pennington's squadron, Tromp bore down straight upon the Spanish fleet though they were lying in English waters. Rarely has there been a naval triumph more complete. Under cover of a fog Oquendo himself with seven vessels escaped to Dunkirk; all the rest were sunk, burnt, or captured. It is said that 15,000 Spaniards perished. On the side of the Dutch only 100 men were killed and wounded. The Spanish power at sea had suffered a blow from which it never recovered.

Charles I was very angry on learning that English ships had been obliged to watch the fleet of a friendly power destroyed in English waters before their eyes. The king had inherited from his father a long series of grievances against the Dutch; and, had he not been involved in serious domestic difficulties, there would probably have been a declaration of war. But Charles' finances did not permit him to take a bold course, and he was also secretly irritated with the Spaniards for having sought the hospitality of English waters (as written evidence shows) without his knowledge and permission. Aerssens was sent to London to smooth over the matter. He had no easy task, but by skill and patience he contrived, in spite of many adverse influences at the court, so to allay the bitter feelings that had been aroused by "the scandal of the Downs" that Charles and his queen were willing, in the early months of 1640, to discuss seriously the project of a marriage between the stadholder's only son and one of the English princesses. In January a special envoy, Jan van der Kerkoven, lord of Heenvlict, joined Aerssens with a formal proposal for the hand of the princess royal; and after somewhat difficult negotiations the marriage was at length satisfactorily arranged. The ceremony took place in London, May 12, 1641. As William was but fifteen years of age and Mary, the princess royal, only nine, the bridegroom returned to Holland alone, leaving the child-bride for a time at Whitehall with her parents. The wedding took place at an ominous time. Ten days after it was celebrated Strafford was executed; and the dark shadow of the Great Rebellion was already hanging over the ill-fated Charles. In the tragic story of the House of Stewart that fills the next two decades there is perhaps no more pathetic figure than that of Mary, the mother of William III. At the time this alliance gave added lustre[pg.153] to the position of the Prince of Orange, both at home and abroad, by uniting his family in close bonds of relationship with the royal houses both of England and France.

In 1640, as the Spaniards remained on the defensive, the stadholder entered Flanders and by a forced march attempted to seize Bruges. His effort, however, was foiled, as was a later attempt to capture Hulst, when Frederick Henry and the States sustained a great loss in the death of the gallant Henry Casimir of Nassau, who was killed in a chance skirmish at the age of 29 years. This regrettable event caused a vacancy in the stadholderates of Friesland and Groningen with Drente. A number of zealous adherents of the House of Orange were now anxious that Frederick Henry should fill the vacant posts to the exclusion of his cousin, William Frederick, younger brother of Henry Casimir. They urged upon the prince, who was himself unwilling to supplant his relative, that it was for the good of the State that there should be a unification of authority in his person; and at last he expressed himself ready to accept the offices, if elected. The result of the somewhat mean intrigues that followed, in which Frederick Henry himself took no part, gave a curious illustration of the extreme jealousy of the provinces towards anything that they regarded as outside intrusion into their affairs. The States-General ventured to recommend the Estates of Friesland to appoint the Prince of Orange; the recommendation was resented, and William Frederick became stadholder. The Frieslanders on their part sent a deputation to Groningen in favour of William Frederick, and Groningen-Drente elected the Prince of Orange. This dispute caused an estrangement for a time between the two branches of the House of Nassau, which was afterwards healed by the marriage of the Friesland stadholder with Albertine Agnes, a daughter of Frederick Henry. From this union the present royal family of Holland trace their descent.

The military operations of the years 1641, 1642 and 1643 were dilatory and featureless. Both sides were sick of the war and were content to remain on the defensive. This was no doubt largely due to the fact that in rapid succession death removed from the stage many of those who had long played leading parts in the political history of the times. Aerssens died shortly after his return from his successful mission to England in the autumn of 1641; and almost at the same time the Cardinal Infante Ferdinand, who during his[pg.154] tenure of the governor-generalship had shown great capacity and prudence both as a statesman and as a commander, expired. In 1642, after eighteen years of almost autocratic rule, Richelieu passed away, his death (December 4, 1642) coming almost half-way between those of his enemy, the intriguing Marie de' Medici (July 3,1642), and that of her son, Louis XIII (May 18, 1643). Anne of Austria, the sister of the King of Spain, became regent in France; but this did not imply any change of policy with regard to the United Provinces, for Cardinal Mazarin, who, through his influence over the regent succeeded to the power of Richelieu, was a pupil in the school of that great statesman and followed in his steps. Moreover, during this same period the outbreak of civil war in England had for the time being caused that country to be wholly absorbed in its own domestic concerns, and it ceased to have any weight in the councils of western Europe. Thus it came to pass that there was a kind of lull in the external affairs of the United Provinces; and her statesmen were compelled to take fresh stock of their position in the changed situation that had been created.

Not that this meant that these years were a time of less pressure and anxiety to the Prince of Orange. His new relations with the English royal family were a source of difficulty to him. Henrietta Maria (March, 1642) came to Holland, bringing with her the princess royal, and for a whole year took up her residence at the Hague. She was received with kindliness and courtesy not only by the stadholder and his family, but by the people of Holland generally. Her presence, together with that of the Queen of Bohemia, at the Princess of Orange's court gave to it quite a regal dignity and splendour, which was particularly gratifying to Amalia von Solms. But the English queen had other objects in view than those of courtesy. She hoped not merely to enlist the sympathies of Frederick Henry for the royal cause in the English civil war, but to obtain through his help supplies of arms and munitions from Holland for King Charles. But in this she did not succeed. The Parliament had sent an envoy, William Strickland, to counteract the influence of Henrietta Maria, and to represent to the States-General that it was fighting in defence of the same principles which had led to the revolt against Spain. The prince was far too prudent to allow his personal inclinations to override his political judgment as a practical statesman. He knew that public opinion in the United[pg.155]

Provinces would never sanction in any form active support of King Charles against his parliament, and he did not attempt it. Intervention was confined to the despatch of an embassy to England with instructions to mediate between the two parties. When the unfortunate queen found that all her efforts on behalf of King Charles were in vain, she determined to leave the safe refuge where she had been so hospitably entertained and to return to her husband's side. She sailed from Scheveningen on March 9, 1643, and reached the royal camp at York in safety.

In the autumn of this year, 1643, two special envoys were sent by Cardinal Mazarin to the Hague; and one of the results of their visit was a renewal of the treaty of 1635 by which France and the United Provinces had entered upon an offensive and defensive alliance and had agreed to conclude no peace but by mutual consent. Nevertheless Frederick Henry, whom long experience had made wary and far-sighted, had been growing for some little time suspicious of the advantage to the republic of furthering French aggrandisement in the southern Netherlands. He saw that France was a waxing, Spain a waning power, and he had no desire to see France in possession of territory bordering on the United Provinces. This feeling on his part was possibly the cause of the somewhat dilatory character of his military operations in 1641 and 1642. The revolt of Portugal from Spain in December, 1640, had at first been welcomed by the Dutch, but not for long. The great and successful operations of the East and West India Companies had been chiefly carried on at the expense of the Portuguese, not of the Spaniards. The great obstacle to peace with Spain had been the concession of the right to trade in the Indies. It was Portugal, rather than Spain, which now stood in the way of the Dutch merchants obtaining that right, for the Spanish government, in its eagerness to stamp out a rebellion which had spread from the Peninsula to all the Portuguese colonies, was quite ready to sacrifice these to secure Dutch neutrality in Europe. The dazzling victory of the French under the young Duke of Enghien over a veteran Spanish army at Rocroi (May, 1643) also had its effect upon the mind of the prince. With prophetic foresight, he rightly dreaded a France too decisively victorious. In the negotiations for a general peace between all the contending powers in the Thirty Years' War, which dragged on their slow length from 1643 to 1648, the stadholder became more and more[pg.156] convinced that it was in the interest of the Dutch to maintain Spain as a counterpoise to the growing power of France, and to secure the favourable terms, which, in her extremity, Spain would be ready to offer.

At first, however, there was no breach in the close relations with France; and Frederick Henry, though hampered by ill-health, showed in his last campaigns all his old skill in siege-craft. By the successive captures of Hertogenbosch, Maestricht and Breda he had secured the frontiers of the republic in the south and south-east. He now turned to the north-west corner of Flanders. In 1644 he took the strongly fortified post of Sas-van-Gent, situated on the Ley, the canalised river connecting Ghent with the Scheldt. In 1645 he laid siege to and captured the town of Hulst, and thus gained complete possession of the strip of territory south of the Scheldt, known as the Land of Waes, which had been protected by these two strongholds, and which has since been called Dutch Flanders.